That we may be one

by Michael Shackleton · January 17, 2007

The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has issued its statement for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2007. This annual observance in January, takes place in the Northern Hemisphere. (In South Africa the Week of Christian Unity occurs around Pentecost.)

It is significant for us in South Africa, however, that the Pontifical Council has quoted extensively from the experience of the Christian community of Umlazi near Durban. It tells of how the people of Umlazi were being decimated by the HIV/Aids tragedy, causing extreme hardship in an area already demoralised by the effects of apartheid and poverty.

The locals found it almost impossible to admit that they as individuals and as families were being poisoned by the Aids virus, because they were ashamed to disclose their frightful problems openly. Aids became an unspeakable topic.

Then young Christians took a new look at the silence around them. They devised an ecumenical service that had as its central theme breaking the silence. People were urged to speak the unspeakable and seek assistance. Silence meant death.

What is critical to this initiative is the young people’s realisation that Christian cooperation involved vaulting the hurdles of denominationalism, those sad divisions which isolate numerous Christian bodies from one another, and which ensure their lack of full communion. It was more than obvious that these divisions were not of African origin but were transplanted here from Europe.

The logical conclusion had to be faced: the Christian experience in Umlazi was not merely a praiseworthy recognition that it took all Christians to work together to assist the Aids-affected community. It was a simultaneous awareness that a divided Christianity is not the best instrument to advance community cooperation to root out Aids and support those affected by it. Isolated, self-sufficient churches are of no use to a broader community crying out for Christian compassion.

The Vatican statement notes that Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in 1993 that during the apartheid era, apartheid was too strong for a divided church. These telling words, and the courage of the Umlazi Christians, should focus the minds of all Christians on the desperate need for them to work ever harder to find full communion with one another. Particularly in the 21st century, there are so many contradictory voices purporting to come from informed Christian sources, that the world cannot be blamed for not hearing what they say.

Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) the Catholic Church has encouraged ecumenical fellowship. The emphasis has gradually been on what unites us and not what divides us. The Council’s Decree on Ecumenism (1964) made concern for reunion a matter of conscience for the whole Church. It recognised the ecclesial reality of other churches and ecclesial communities separated from Rome.

The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has just published a handbook for this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Its author, Cardinal Walter Kasper, astutely notes that Jesus did not primarily express his desire for unity in a teaching or a commandment to his disciples, but in a prayer to his Father, that they may be one. Since unity is a gift, the cardinal writes, it is fitting that Christians pray for it together.

With so much crime, corruption and inefficiency in South Africa today, our prayers for Christian unity should be paramount. Archbishop Tutu’s remarks on the weakness of a divided church against apartheid, are equally valid for a divided church against any other social and moral evil. May we all assimilate the gravity of the archbishop’s words.